The economy’s in the toilet, we’re fighting two or three wars, and apparently this constitutes a slow news day in Atlanta. How else can you explain a dozen-year-old Matchbox car making the “news” for having a phone sex line on its fender?

Of course, back in 2000 when the GMC tow truck was made, the phone number tampo’ed on the fender was unregistered; Mattel (maker of Hot Wheels and Matchbox) has long since stopped putting phone numbers of any sort on its die-cast vehicles, in case something ridiculous were to happen in a dozen years’ time.

This wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened: hardcore Hot Wheels collectors may recall that a tow truck introduced in the 1970s had the home phone number of designer Larry Wood tampo’d on the side.

10 Responses to “(Phone Of)fender: The skeevy “threat” of a dozen-year-old toy car”

Hmmm…how bored do you need to be before you dial the phone number on the fender of a Matchbox car – and how slow a news day does it have to be before they report the results on local news? And “1-800-FAST-TOW”? What do you suppose the phone sex line is – “Hot service station girls”? “Brake and muffler shop babes”?

Once, when I worked for a major diecast outfit, a particular car had a window tampo advertising its website. Well, for those not looking closely and went to .com instead of .net, they ended up with a screen full of pictures of girls who were in such financial distress that they couldn’t even afford clothes! The poor dears.

Yes, we don’t want any children calling the number like this one random child had his mother do. So, to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again, we’ll put it on the World Wide Web. No one will see it there.